


Icarus

by missazrael



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Icarus AU, Multi, Other, Titan!Jean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2373092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, during the battle of Trost, it had been Jean who had emerged from the titan's neck?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icarus

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my friends Tai and Oscar for getting this idea in my head, where it took root and wouldn't let go.

Marco watches Jean fall, plunging out of the sky like a bird with broken wings. He calls out his name—screams it—and tries to turn around, nearly managing it before Reiner catches him around the waist with one thick arm and uses his last burst of gas to propel them forward. As they crash through the window into Headquarters, the glass shattering around them and filling the air with biting silver shards, Marco twists against Reiner’s chest and reaches back, grasping hopelessly towards where Jean fell. He thinks, as they collapse on the hard wooden floor and crunch glass beneath their shoulders, that he saw Jean on a roof, crumpled and broken, watching them as they got away, as they used his plan to escape, as they survived, reaching out with one hand as a titan beside him mimics the gesture and reaches for him.

Marco isn’t a violent person, but it takes both Reiner and Bertolt to keep him from breaking one of the cowering HQ member’s jaw.

They retreat deeper into the building, dragging the forlorn HQ soldiers with them, and Marco takes some grim comfort in knowing that Jean’s plan worked, that everyone who had been on that rooftop with him made it to Headquarters and survived. He doesn’t want to think about what happened to Jean, about how his gear failed him, abruptly and completely, and how he’d been right beside Marco before he suddenly plummeted out of the sky like a stone. They had a legend back in Jinae, an ancient one from the time before the walls, told in whispers and passed down through family lines. It had told about a boy who lived with his father in a prison, guarded by a monster, and how the father had made wings of wax for them to escape. The boy, enamored by his freedom, hadn’t listened to his father and flown too close to the sun, melting his wings and sending him falling to his death in the ocean. Marco wonders, having to stop and clasp a hand over his mouth, fighting against a surge of bile in the back of his throat, if the boy had looked like Jean had when he fell, if his wings had trailed him in the depths the way Jean’s grappling hooks had flailed impotently in the air before chasing him down.

He doesn’t look up when he hears something crash outside. It sounds like thunder, but it’s probably just titans banging around, and he stays still, curled in on himself with Armin’s slender arm around his shoulders and his slender body pressed comfortingly up against his own, as Eren and Mikasa get up to investigate. He doesn’t get up until Armin starts tugging on him, pulling him up as he babbles excitedly, something about a titan fighting other titans, and getting to his feet feels like the hardest thing Marco will ever have to do.

He’s tall, and can see over the heads of everyone clustered around the window, peering out and talking to each other in low, frantic voices, and he sees the titan. It’s tall too, a fifteen meter class, tall and lean and proportional, and he notes with dull, muted interest that it looks largely human, if he ignores its lack of skin and the way its muscles are all exposed, red and twitching and moving over its bones as it whirls and twists, beating at the smaller titans that cluster around it. He hears the other cadets talking, but one voice rises above the others, striking in its wonder and awe. “I didn’t know they attacked each other.” Bertolt gives voice to what they were all thinking, to what everyone else was dancing around with quiet, hushed tones, and he knows he’s seeing something incredible but he can’t find it in himself to care. His emotions are all ground down, burnt to cinders by watching Jean fall from the sky, and he watches the aberrant titan, watches it roar and lash out against its fellows, until Armin takes him by the elbow and gently steers him away.

He follows them into the basement, the area where Headquarters keeps the gas, and Armin comes up with a plan to deal with the seven titans wandering dumbly down there. Marco accepts his part in the plan, crawling up into the rafters with six others, six of the best, and waiting until the right moment to attack. He finds, then, that he is still capable of emotion, that he can still feel something besides aching emptiness; he finds rage burning deep in his belly as his blades cut into the back of a titan’s neck, and as he rides the behemoth to the floor and it lays dead and steaming under his feet, he attacks it, carving it apart with his blades in silent fury, until Reiner pulls him off and crushes him against his broad chest. He struggles against him, trying to get away, to get back to the titan, to punish it for what one of its fellows took from him, until Bertolt comes up behind him and squashes him between himself and Reiner, wrapping his long arms around them both. It’s then, sandwiched between the only two members of the 104th bigger than himself, that Marco allows himself one deep, wretched sob, and hides his face against Reiner’s collarbone.

They fill their gas tanks, armed once more against the monsters outside, and Marco retreats away from his friends, filling his tank in a corner by himself and brooding. Connie tries to approach him, but retreats after getting one look at Marco’s face; he realizes that he must be showing more than he thought, and thinks ruefully how he never could hide his emotions very easily. His mother had warned him about that, the day he left for the military, clasping his face between her broad, work-weathered hands, and making him promise to come home. After he’d reassured her that he would do everything he could to serve the king and then come home, she’d warned him about his face, patting him on the cheek and telling him to be careful, to keep his own council, and to come home. More than anything else, to come home.

Marco remembers that Jean’s family is from Trost, and he wonders sickly if his parents are waiting for their son to reappear on their doorstep.

They leave the same way they came in, through the windows on the upper level. It’s gotten quiet outside, and when they creep out onto the Trost rooftops, they see the aberrant titan again. Its battles with its smaller brothers have exhausted it, and it’s leaning against a building, its head down, shaggy ash blond hair hanging in its eyes, as other titans gnaw on its arms and legs. It looks up when it hears them emerging, and its eyes flash golden in the fading sunlight. Marco wonders what it sees, what it thinks, and if it recognizes them as prey once more or if it is more interested in what is happening to its body, slowly disappearing down the throats of smaller titans.

“It wore itself out,” Mikasa says, her tone oddly dismissive. She fires her grappling hooks, moving towards the walls, and Eren and Armin are the first to follow. Marco lingers, watching the aberrant, and he gets the feeling, completely irrational but unmistakable, that it’s watching him. When a smaller titan, previously occupied by chewing on the aberrant’s shoulder, turns to look at the fleeing cadets, the aberrant snaps at it, surprisingly quick and vicious, and shears the curious titan open from eye to jaw. Marco blinks, surprised, but that burst of energy is all the aberrant has left; it sinks to its knees, the weight of its body pushing the other titans out of the way, and then collapses onto its face, unmoving.

He feels a hand on his shoulder. “Come on.” It’s Annie, and her tone is not unkind. “We need to get over the wall.” Marco nods, and follows her to the next rooftop, preparing to leave Headquarters behind.

At the last moment, he turns, and looks back at the aberrant. The other titans have wandered away from it, losing interest as it steams and disappears. Something about the way it landed looks familiar, almost human, as if Marco has seen someone sleep like that before, and his heart gives a painful twinge in his chest. He wonders if he’s going to spend the rest of his life like this, jumping at shadows and having everything remind him of Jean, if every dying monster or diving bird will remind him of his lost best friend.

He sees something move on the back of the titan’s neck.

Curious, he takes a step back, towards the fallen titan, unaware that he’s not the only one still on the rooftop, that his temporary squad, all ahead of him in the rankings but somehow entrusted to his leadership, waits with him, watching him with shadowed eyes as he hurries back to the edge of the rooftop and crouches down. Something moves on the nape of the titan’s neck, in the spot where they’ve been taught to attack, to let their blades cut deep, and he watches in mute awe and horror as a figure pulls itself back, out of the titan’s neck, and lolls backwards, its hands and arms still entangled in the titan’s body.

The dying sunlight falls on the street, just a common city street in Trost district, turned by circumstance into a war zone, and illuminates the figure pulling out of the titan, and Marco forgets to breath. He hears Annie gasp beside him, and Reiner say something he can’t discern, something that comes from far, far away, and then he’s moving, his body acting of its own accord. He fires his grappling hooks down, into the aberrant’s shoulder, anchoring in decaying titan flesh, and leaps off the roof, chasing his lines downward, landing on the back of the titan’s head, his boots tangling in ashy blond hair that he should have known, that he should have recognized. He almost falls, nearly trips as he runs forward and drops to his knees in front of the figure in the titan’s neck. Unafraid, Marco shoots his hands forward and grabs at the boy’s shoulders, feeling firm, living flesh and bone under his hands, feverishly hot from being encased in a titan’s body, and then his hands are on the boy’s face, running over familiar features and tilting it to the side so he can see it better.

Jean wrinkles his nose, his eyes still closed and burn marks etched across his cheeks, and makes an undecipherable noise, and Marco’s eyes burn with tears; he knows this face, and he knows that sound, the sound Jean makes when he doesn’t want to wake up and start training. And then he clasps Jean to his chest, making Jean’s head loll backwards, and doesn’t even notice when his squad lands heavily around them and bears witness to the miracle.

~*~

Jean doesn’t come fully awake for awhile, tossing and turning in restless dreams, feeling like he’s underwater, like he’s fallen into Trost’s filthy, industrial river and is trying to pull himself to the surface before he’s swept away. He awakens to too much shouting, the sounds harsh and reverberating in his head, and he’s dimly aware that he has his face pressed hard against someone’s shoulder, flattening his nose. He grunts and flails feebly, his arms moving as if through thick, cloying syrup, and beats weakly against his capture. He hears a gasp, coming from a great distance, and then he’s released, flopping back bonelessly against someone’s shoulder, and he groans as eye-searing light attacks his eyelids, making his head throb.

“Jean! Jean, you’re…” Marco’s voice filters through the haze, and Jean relaxes, the muscles in his arms going limp and pliable, trusting. If Marco is holding on to him, it’ll be okay. He must have crashed his gear, had a training accident, and Marco is with him, making sure he’s okay, that he’s not laying on a rooftop with two broken legs, with a titan coming closer behind him while he’s unable to get away, while he drags his crippled, broken body away from it, leaving a wash of dark, crimson blood across the roof’s warm red tiles…

Jean gasps and sits up, opening his eyes in horror as he remembers.

Bright sunlight assaults his eyes, searing his retinas, and Jean turns his head away, the muscles creaking and stiff, bringing a hand to his face to shield them, and he’s amazed that after everything that happened, the worst thing he’s feeling is this passing agony deep in his eye sockets. He feels crusted scabs on his cheek, almost like he’s been burned, and he traces his fingers down them, wincing as dried blood flakes off under his fingertips.

“Jean!”

Marco is shaking him, trying to get his attention, and Jean opens his mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a rusty groan.

“Is he okay?”

He recognizes Reiner’s deep rumble, and Jean is somehow reassured that the big cadet is nearby. He tries to lift his head, and loses his strength halfway there, his head falling and lolling against Marco’s shoulder. It fits like it was made to go there, like coming home, and Jean sighs as he opens his eyes.

He doesn’t know how he got here. He doesn’t recognize this place, he’s never been on this parade ground before, backed up against one of the walls that’s casting shade around them, leaning heavily against Marco while Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie stand in front of them, blades drawn, defensive. He frowns, ignoring Marco’s concerned babbling, trying to piece things together. Why’re Marco and his squad here? How’d they get gas to get here? 

Why isn’t he dead?

~*~

Jean moves and flails against him, and Marco loosens his arms, giving Jean room to move without letting him go. He’s terrified, more afraid than he’s ever been in his life, every instinct screaming at him to get up and run, to throw Jean over his shoulder and take off, run until his legs give out underneath him, but he knows they’d be mowed down like animals before he could take two steps. He might still try it, if not for the other cadets standing in front of them, forming a shield with their bodies, their blades drawn. Reiner has his up, facing forward, a hulking, glowering menace, sixteen years old and already larger than most of the men of the Garrison, every line in his body radiating tension and barely leashed power. Bertolt stands beside him, his blades up but held lower than Reiner’s, and he keeps glancing at his best friend, gauging his own reactions on Reiner’s, and he looks like what he is: a frightened teenager, sweat rolling off his body in sheets, and yet willing to stand between Marco and Jean and the cannons the Garrison has pointed at them. Annie stands off to the side, tiny and slight, her blades held loosely in her hands, pointed towards the ground, but there’s more curled aggression and violence in her lazy stance than either Reiner’s or Bertolt’s, and Marco notices that the Garrison standing closest to her are shying back, as if afraid to get too close.

It doesn’t stop the head Garrison soldier from shouting at them, demanding answers none of them can give, and Marco shakes Jean, trying to be gentle but sick with worry and fear, and Jean’s head snaps back and forth.

“Jean, wake up, you have to wake up, you have to _answer_ him…”

Jean grunts, reaching up to push feebly at Marco’s hands, making the same sounds he does when he doesn’t want to wake up in the morning, and Marco is nearly overwhelmed by the deep, simple affection that swells up in his chest. Jean has been returned to him, brought back from the grave encased in a titan’s body, and while everyone else is stricken with fear, panicked over a human who can wrap himself in a titan’s form, panicked by the monster, Marco can only see his friend, his _best_ friend, and he can’t hold back the tiny sob that wells up in his chest.

Maybe Jean hears that, or maybe the shaking finally rousts him, because his eyes flutter open, immediately squinting against the harsh sunlight, and Marco presses him close to his shoulder again, turning his body towards the Garrison guards, as if the fragile meat of his flesh and bones could be enough to protect Jean from their guns.

“Whuzzuh..?”

Somehow, Marco understands that. “Jean, you… you fell. Your gear failed, and you fell, and I…” He swallows around the lump in his throat. “I couldn’t go back for you.” He swallows again, forcing down the surge of guilt that rises up with that admission. “We left you behind, and then you… you came back.” Jean is watching him, his amber eyes dazed but the pupils blown wide, and Jean puts his hand on his own face, tracing the faint burn marks left behind by the titan’s body. Marco puts his hand over Jean’s, so he doesn’t hurt himself, so he doesn’t make the burns worse, and squeezes it. “You were a titan, Jean. You came back in a titan, and you saved us.” He swallows again, his voice thick. “You saved _all_ of us.”

Jean grunts, and his lips move, but Marco can’t make out what he’s trying to say. He leans closer, turning his ear towards Jean’s mouth. “What?”

He can feel Jean’s breath tickle the shell of his ear, and then Jean’s pushing weakly at his head, pushing him away. “Fucking crushing me…”

Marco makes a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a sob, and shifts Jean around, releasing his hold on him while still hovering over him, trying to keep him upright. Jean starts to pull himself together, rearranging his legs and arms so he’s crouching on the ground, his head down, and he shrugs Marco’s arm off his shoulders.

“Marco?” Reiner’s voice is calm, but tight with tension. “They’re not going to wait forever.”

Jean looks forward, looks surprised to see his entourage, those cadets risking their own lives to protect him, and Marco crouches beside him, speaking quietly but rapidly. “They think you’re a monster, that you’re going to attack the walls. They want to _kill_ you.” Marco won’t dignify what this is with a word like _execution_ ; this would be murder, plain and simple, and any farm boy from the backwoods of Jinae could see that.

Jean shakes his head, and drags a hand over his face, muttering to himself in words Marco can’t hear or understand.

“Cadet Jean Kirschtein! This is the last time I’ll ask! ARE YOU HUMAN OR ARE YOU A MONSTER?!”

The Garrison lieutenant’s voice rings out loud and strident, almost strangling on his own words with stress and fear, and Jean lives his head. For a moment, Marco almost recoils; he’s seen Jean’s eyes burn before, when he’s determined to master some difficult move or about to throw down with Eren, but never like this. He’s never seen such unquenchable determination before, such living, almost preternatural fire, and he’s vividly reminded of the titan’s eyes, when they caught the sun and glowed like liquid gold.

“I’M HUMAN!” Jean yells back, his voice cracking a little on the last syllable. “I’M A HUMAN BEING!”

The yard goes silent, and Marco notices Reiner drop his stance a little, the muscles in his legs standing out under his white pants and dark boots, like a cat ready to spring. He can hear Bertolt grinding his teeth, and Annie sighing quietly through her long nose. He moves closer to Jean, trying to put an arm around him again, but Jean pushes him off as he struggles to his feet, and Marco scrambles up beside him.

He watches as the Garrison lieutenant shakes his head and says something they can’t hear, and Marco feels his heart constrict in his chest as the man raises his arm above his head. Reiner laughs, low and dull, and Bertolt glances over at him, his eyes deep and impossibly sad, and Marco reaches for his blades; he’s ready to die, now that he knows who and what he’s dying for.

The lieutenant’s arm starts to fall, and Reiner shifts his weight to his back foot, gathering his strength to launch forward into the cannon fire.

Jean surprises them all; he lunges forward, past Marco, pushing between Bertolt and Reiner, and Marco sees one of Jean’s lean, long-fingered hands rise up, almost like he’s imitating the lieutenant, and then come down on one of Reiner’s upraised blades. Blood sprays up into the air, a bright, scarlet red pattern painted across the air and frozen in the moment, and then cannons roar and they’re trapped inside suffocating, swirling air, and Marco closes his eyes as he prepares to die.

~*~

Bertolt still isn’t quite sure what brought them all here, but he knows one thing: he knows the Garrison is going to open fire on them, and that they’ll all be torn apart by a hail of cannon balls and bullets. 

He’s not brave, he’s never been brave, but his body acts of its own accord: one long arm whips out, grabbing Annie and spinning her around in front of him. She makes a soft, startled noise, that he somehow hears over the roar of cannons and the tornado of super heated air around them, air so hot it practically steals the air from his lungs. He spins her around, pushing her up against Reiner’s chest and turning himself around, using his height and long legs to trip both of them, sending them to the ground with his back between them and the Garrison, his arms wrapped around them both, offering them the only feeble protection he can.

~*~

Jean doesn’t know how it happens, or why. All he knows is that he feels Reiner’s blade slice through his hand, severing tendons and ligaments, ripping through muscle and grinding against bone, and it sends a jolt up his arm. In the split second before the pain reaches his brain, he sees half his hand separate, bisected by shining steel, his fingers falling away from him, and he swears he can smell the hair on his arm burning.

Then everything is burning, burning and expanding and pushing outward, and he sees Bertolt drop Annie and Reiner to the ground, protecting them with his own body, and he hears Marco gasp behind him. This can’t be how it ends, not for his friends—his brave, stupid friends who are trying to protect him, who are risking everything for his sorry ass—and Jean opens his mouth to scream, trying to say no, but what comes out is a wordless, primal howl as he flings himself between them and the cannons.

~*~

At first, it was all sound, noise so loud it pressed in around them like a physical thing, like thick, billowing waves. And then it was silent, but for the pounding of his heart in his ears, throbbing away like a drum.

Marco swallows, his throat clicking dryly, and realizes he’s still alive. That, or death is filled with thick, billowing hot air that scorches his lungs and the acrid scent of something burning. He thinks, crazily, of the old story again, about the boy with the wax wings who fell out of the sky, and he wonders what kind of hideous monster could force humans to the sky to escape it.

He opens his eyes.

Bertolt is hunched on the ground at his feet, his arms around Reiner and Annie. He’s facing Marco, although his head is down, his eye screwed shut. Marco can see him breathing, and already two blonde heads are moving against his chest, struggling to get free. He watches, impassively, as a tiny fist hits him the shoulder and Annie surfaces, her eyes wide and uncharacteristically fearful, and she glances at him before looking beyond him, above them, and then her face blanches of all color.

Marco looks up, and realizes why they’re still alive.

They’re entombed, surrounded, by an enormous ribcage, the muscles attached to it pulsing and moving, and as Marco watches in slowly dawning horror, the entire thing shifts, moving above their heads. He whips his gaze front again, feeling his eyes go wide with panic, and whatever it is around them has them blocked off, one long, skinless arm and shoulder between them and the Garrison.

Marco turns his head, and he hears something like ice cracking across a pond, and then sounds start to filter back in. He hears Reiner swearing, muffled, and shouting, from far, far away, and, somewhere much closer, someone gasping and coughing. _A titan_ , he realizes, _we’re inside a titan. Inside a titan, and we’re not dead. We’re not dead, because it saved us._

He looks up again, through titan flesh that is already starting to steam away into nothingness, and watches as Jean rips himself backwards, out of the back of the titan’s neck, wrenching himself free, and Marco stumbles backwards a few steps, his arms rising automatically. He watches with mute acceptance as Jean fights his hands free from the titan’s body, his ears picking up the tearing sound as muscle fibers rend apart, and then Jean is falling, overbalancing and falling through the titan’s ribs. Marco misjudges by one step, but hurries to correct himself, and Jean hits him like a sack of potatoes and they go to the ground together.

~*~

Later, when it’s all over, Marco won’t remember what he said to the Garrison. He’ll remember that they’d made a plan, the five of them, huddled inside the rotting remains of Jean’s titan, a frail, terrified cluster of humanity where the titan’s heart should have been. He’ll remember that it all came down to him, in the end; that they all believed in his leadership more than he ever did, more than he ever could, and that they’d chosen him to speak on behalf of all of them. Even then, that might not have been enough… if not for Jean’s eyes. If not for the way Jean had looked at him, his eyes wet with fear and confusion, glowing gold as light started filtering in through the titan’s—through _his_ titan’s—corpse, and grabbed Marco’s wrist.

“Marco,” he’d whispered, his voice shaking, “I don’t want to die.”  
 And Marco had understood, had known what he’d had to do, and left his maneuver gear behind in the shelter of the titan’s body to storm out in front of it and parlay with the Garrison. He won’t remember the words he says (although he’ll be told later that they were inspiring), and he won’t remember the stance he takes as he says them (bold and fearless, apparently), but he will remember saluting, and he’ll remember the feeling of all the blood draining out of his face as the Garrison lieutenant shakes his head and raises his arm to signal another volley of cannon fire. He’ll remember hearing Reiner chuckle behind him, low and hopeless, and he’ll remember Bertolt muttering something under his breath, something that sounds like a pagan prayer, and how Annie joins him, even though it sounds like they’re not speaking the same language. Most of all, he’ll remember the low, hurt noise Jean makes, and how that sound stabs him through the chest, how that hurts even more than the knowledge that they’re about to die, and he’ll remember the shocked, hurt tears that well up in his eyes. He’d done the best he could, and it wasn’t good enough.

He’ll remember Dot Pixis, appearing out of nowhere, and he’ll remember another phrase from those forgotten stories, those forbidden tales: _deus ex machina_ , the machine of god, descending to save them all when it seems all hope is lost. He’ll remember the machine of god in the form of a short, slender old man with a silver mustache, just as the old, familiar sensation of a swoon catches up with him, starting at his calves and rushing towards his head, faster than a breath, faster than a heartbeat, and he’ll remember falling backwards.

Reiner will tell him, later, that this time it was Jean who caught _him_.

~*~

Reiner is a lot of things, but he’s not a coward. He’s always been one of the first ones in to dangerous situations, although the danger in training was very, very different from the danger here. That’s not to say that training was ever safe and easy, or that some young men and women didn’t lose their lives as a result of some of their more dangerous missions. But he hasn’t felt danger like this since their village was overrun and his uncle had sent them on a raft down the river, away from the marauding titans, and he and Berwick had had to hold Annie back from jumping into the water and trying to swim ashore. He hasn’t felt that kind of creeping despair, watching their village burn and listening to everyone they’d ever known scream, for a long time, and he’d hoped to never feel it again.

It’s different, though, this time. This time, there’s a glimmer of hope, coiled and burning slowly in the pit of his stomach, trying to fight through the sense that all is lost, that he’s going to lose everything all over again. This time, they have a titan on their side.

He stands on Wall Rose, Bertolt beside him and quietly, subtly trying to inch his way between Annie and the edge of the wall, as if he could protect her from the titans wandering below them with his body alone. Reiner bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling; he’s already seen the murderous glint in Annie’s eyes, and he knows Bertolt is about thirty seconds away from getting dropped like a sack of potatoes. Two minutes away, tops.

He turns his attention away from the milling titans and the building drama between his best friends, and watches Jean and Marco’s backs. They haven’t left each other’s sides since Dot Pixis showed up and saved all of them, and the skin on Reiner’s forearms still prickles into goosebumps at the thought of how close they came to complete annihilation. Marco stands close to Jean, bending his head to hear him better when Jean speaks, and Reiner strains to catch his words but can’t. Jean’s uniform pants are ragged and blood-soaked, full of holes where his bones had splintered out of his skin, and yet he’s walking easily; the burn marks on his face had been darker when he’d pulled himself out of the titan body the second time, but when he turns his face to get a better look at Marco, Reiner sees that they’ve faded again, leaving his skin smooth and unmarred. It looks, for a moment, like Jean is going to try and kiss Marco, and Reiner holds his breath until Jean shakes his head and looks away again, then lets it out in a disappointed huff.

They’re cute together. They just need to _realize_ it.

He hears a thump and a whimper behind him, and smiles, turning around to help Bertolt to his feet.

~*~

Marco glances over his shoulder, grimacing a little when he sees Bertolt flat on his back with Reiner helping him up and Annie standing off to the side, brushing her hair behind her ear and looking entirely unapologetic. It’s not hard to piece together what just happened. He wishes they could keep it together a little better, but then, he supposes they’re just blowing off some steam and dealing with the stress of the situation. Either way, they’re not bothering anyone, and he turns his attention back to Jean.

Jean has been quiet and thoughtful ever since they got up here, ever since Marco came out of his faint and found himself supported against Jean’s narrow chest and Dot Pixis arguing calmly with the Garrison lieutenant. After soothing the lieutenant’s ruffled feathers, Pixis had assumed control, and even without knowing what was going on, Marco had admired the seamless, natural way Pixis had taken over. It was a beautiful piece of leadership, and he hopes he lives long enough to try and emulate him.

Jean mutters something under his breath, and Marco ducks his head again so he can hear him. “What if I’m not strong enough to lift it?”

That’s the crux of the issue, right there. The plan isn’t a bad one, even if it’s just something Bertolt managed to throw together in a panic, the plan he’d whispered to Marco as they huddled inside the rotting titan body, their heads all together as pieces of dying monster rained down all around them. Honestly, Marco had been impressed that, even with all the chaos around them, Bertolt had had the foresight to notice the enormous rock that formed part of the Trost landscape, a huge boulder that must have been there since time immemorial, too heavy and unwieldy to be moved by human hands. For a titan, though, it might just be possible.

“You can do it,” Marco tells him, forcing good cheer that he doesn’t really feel. Jean is a big titan, a fourteen meter class at least, but he’s slender and slight; even in that body, he’s built for speed, not strength. Jean knows it, too, and he looks at Marco with flat, opaque eyes, and he tries again.

“If you can’t, you can’t. We won’t know until we try, right?” If only it were really that simple, and Marco feels a sharp pang in his chest, a hideous loneliness for the innocent kids they were yesterday, when the future held nothing but promise and the rest of their lives.

Jean makes an noncommittal noise and faces forward again, and Marco wishes he could do something to ease the tension in his best friend’s jaw, wishes he could take some of the weight, some of the pressure, off Jean’s narrow shoulders and carry it on his own. He knows that Jean is deceptively strong, packing a lot of strength and power into his skinny frame, but now he just looks frail and exhausted, the bags under his eyes as dark as bruises and the bloodstains on his uniform mute testament to the ordeal passed and testimony to the ordeal yet to come.

Marco puts his hand on Jean’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze, and Jean looks back at him. For a moment, Marco sees Jean’s expression soften, turning from the hardened mask of a warrior into the face of a frightened, woefully unhappy child faced with a task they don’t know how to do, and his heart aches. “I’d do it for you if I could,” he tells him, dropping his voice low so no one can hear them. “You know that, right? If I was…”

“If you were a monster?” Jean interrupts, and his face seals up again, smoothing out into something protected and impregnable. “If you were a fucking freak too?”

“You’re not a monster.” Marco says it louder than he wants to, and Pixis looks back over his shoulder at them. He drops his voice again, whispering urgently. “You’re a _miracle_ , you’re the one who can help us turn this over, you’re the one who can help us win!” He squeezes Jean’s shoulder again, his knuckles starting to turn white as he tries to make Jean understand. 

Jean watches his face the entire time he’s talking, and his eyes go a little wider. Marco knows he’s listening, that he’s absorbed what he said, when Jean looks away and blinks his eyes, fast and pointedly, and he drops his hand from his shoulder. “Thanks,” Jean tells him quietly, and Marco smiles.

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

Pixis calls them forward then, and they both hustle up beside the Commander, Annie, Bertolt, and Reiner joining them, and they go over the plan one more time. They’ll use their maneuver gear to soar over the rooftops, Jean in the middle of the formation and everyone else fanning out around him, protecting him, until they’re near the big rock. Then Jean will transform, pick up the rock, and carry it to the hole in the wall, sealing it shut. While he’s a titan, their job will be to protect him from the other titans, working with the Garrison to clear a path. Marco wishes, a little ruefully, that the Survey Corps was here; they know titans the best, and have the most experience taking them down. They picked the worst day imaginable to go beyond the walls, or the Colossal Titan picked the worst day to try and attack.

That’s an interesting thought, one that nags at the edges of Marco’s mind, and he pushes it aside. He needs to focus on the mission at hand.

They check their gear, their gas, their blades. Reiner gets loud, bluffing jovially with Bertolt the way he does before every mission, even if Bertolt doesn’t really answer beyond a few monosyllables; Annie stands apart, checking her gear repeatedly, and then checking other people’s gear, yanking Marco back by his shirt collar to wipe a minuscule piece of dust off his blade canister; the Garrison troops mill around them, falling silent whenever they pass by Jean, looking at him out of the sides of their eyes, their faces twisting with unconscious disgust; Pixis drinks from his hip flask and looks out over the wall, searching the faces of the titan’s down below; and Jean sits on the edge of the wall, his legs dangling carelessly over it, gazing off over the bloody roofs of his hometown, his lips moving silently as he repeats the mission objectives to himself, over and over again.

They leave all at once, Reiner and two Garrison soldiers leading, Annie and Marco flanking Jean on one side and Bertolt flanking him on the other, and the rear guard leaving the wall a split second later, and Marco hears the wind howl in his ears as he plunges towards the earth before deploying his grappling hooks and shooting forward, keeping pace with Jean as best as he can, and he wonders how wings of wax can ever stand up against the sun.

~*~

Pixis watches the special forces leave, his best troops with cadets not even fully out of training yet, and takes a drink from his flask.

“Sir?” His aide stands next to him, watching the soldiers zoom away with worried eyes. “What if they can’t do it?”

Pixis swallows and clears his throat. “If they can’t, we’ll have to kill that boy.”

~*~

Annie both loves and hates using the maneuver gear. She loves how it lifts her above everything, above the stink and drudgery of daily life, above backbreaking labor and tedious, mindless tasks, above Bertolt’s shy, oddly enduring but equally frustrating advances, above Eren’s noise and Connie’s dumb jokes and her constant, grueling competition with Mikasa. She loves how it feels like flying, her only moments of solitude and isolation in a life surrounded by other people, packed close in the barracks at night and loomed over by her idiot cousin during the day. It’s a little like being in her attic loft at home, her beloved, deeply missed attic loft, with its gently sloped ceiling and the soft golden light that used to fill it every morning, and how she could hear the soft murmuring of her father’s voice, talking to his brother by the fire below her as she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound as if by a lullaby. Even now, with the horror of the titans all around her, the titans with their gaping mouths and eyes that aren’t quite vacant and mindless, she is never entirely free from her bone-deep, aching desire to go home again.

At the same time, she hates it. She hates it bitterly, deeply, almost as much as she hates the titans that took everything she ever loved away from her. She hates it because she didn’t know how to use it when it mattered, when she could have made a different, and now it’s too late. Every time she uses it, every time she lifts into the air and goes zipping forward, she remembers their old village, and her father shoving her against Reiner’s chest and asking him—no, _begging_ him—to keep her safe. She can’t remember Reiner’s answer, only his arms tightening around her like a vise, and how she’d struggled, kicking and flailing until she’d bloodied his nose, and how it took both him and Berwick to keep her from jumping into the river and swimming back to shore. She remembers the flat shine of tears across Bertolt’s eyes as he steered their raft to the center of the river, catching it in the current, and she remembers watching her father’s figure recede into the distance, remembers him standing with the river swirling around his knees, waving frantically at them and calling out, calling over and over “I love you, Annie! Be brave! Be strong! Remember what I taught you! I love you! I’m proud of you!”

She didn’t realize until later that he hadn’t said a word to Reiner, his favorite nephew, but the one time she’d summoned up the courage to ask him about it, he’d shrugged and told her he understood.

Grappling hooks hiss in front of her, and she snaps out of her revery, directing her eyes forward. They fall on Reiner’s broad back, on his position leading the group, and she reconsiders. Maybe the titans didn’t take _everything_ she ever loved.

Although she’ll never tell him that, the dumb ox.

~*~

The wind whistles past Jean’s face, tearing through his hair and throwing it into a disarray, and he squints his eyes against it. They’re moving too slow, he wants to speed up, he wants to get to the rock and get it over with, so he’ll know, one way or another. He’ll know if he’s a useful monster, or a disposable one.

He’s no fool; he knows that if he fails in his mission, he’ll be killed. Even if he succeeds, he might be killed, but at least if he succeeds, he’ll have an argument against his own destruction. If he fails, they’ll kill him like an unwanted dog. The thought of his own death scares him, but at least he can understand why they’d want to kill him. They can’t tolerate a wild, unpredictable titan shifter in their midst, someone who could transform at a moment’s notice and rain their doom down around their ears. What he can’t stomach is the knowledge that if he fails, they’ll take it out on his friends, that they’ll find themselves looking down the same gun barrels. All for the crime of knowing and defending him.

He has to succeed. They can’t die for him. He won’t _let_ them die for him.

Jean feels it then, the deep feeling in his gut, something foreign and heavy bubbling and stirring there. It feels like it’s coming from outside of himself, from something he doesn’t and can’t understand, and he he realizes it’s the titan. It’s waking up inside him, fighting against him, yearning and aching to be free, and what scares him the most is that he wants to let it. He wants to wrap himself in its body, hide away inside its bulk, and use it to protect them. 

He can save their lives. He can save all of them.

They soar over the rooftops, over the huge rock—Jean used to play on it as a child, used to climb on it and think it was the biggest thing in the entire world, after the wall—and Jean doesn’t use his grappling hooks, letting his weight pull him down out of the sky, plunging towards the rock, and he slips a blade out of its sheath and slashes his palm against it. And then the world is consumed by fire and blood as the monster awakens around him.

~*~

Marco isn’t used to Jean changing, especially so close to him, and the blast of heated air pushes him off course, nearly smashing him into a building before he rights himself. He turns his head, his bangs fluttering around the sides of his forehead, absurdly ticklish against his sweat-damp skin, and the watches the transformation. There’s surprisingly little to see, most of it lost to steam and roiling dust, but he watches the form, violent and thrashing, watches the titan fighting its way free. He watches it throw its head back, its jaws straining wide as it roars in mingled pain and fury, and he recognizes the curve of its throat, the line of its neck unmistakably Jean’s, and Marco has a moment to wonder, in startlingly, uncomfortable clarity, when exactly he memorized the lines of Jean’s neck.

The titan stumbles, nearly falling, and Marco ignores every instinct in his body, every single one that screams to flee, to get away from the monstrosity before him, and rappels in close, landing on the titan’s shoulder. He hears a shout, distantly recognizing it as one of the Garrison guards, and he doesn’t doubt that it’s a warning or an order to get away. He ignores it, nearly stumbling as the titan moves underneath him, flailing his hand out and catching himself against its neck.

The titan’s flesh is hot under his feet and hand, burning through the soles of his boots and rising around him like summer, the air practically shimmering in waves. It feels like the skin of his hand is on fire, scorching away from the titan’s neck, and he snatches it back, cradling it against his chest. The scent of the titan fills his nose and throat, rich and metallic, coppery like blood and carnage, like slaughter, but somewhere underneath all of that, the faintest scent lingers, there and then gone, that smells like Jean, as distinctive and unmistakable as the line of his throat and the burnished gold of his eyes. Marco remembers the wisteria that grew around his mother’s house, the scent visceral and overwhelming in his nostrils, and his head swims with it.

No. No, not now, he can’t faint now, he’ll fall off the titan to his death. Marco goes to one knee, rapping it hard against an exposed bone in the titan’s shoulder, feeling its flesh squelch under his weight and its fluids soak through his pants, and concentrates on his breathing. Don’t faint. Don’t pass out.

Something lands heavily just below him, jarring him, and for a moment, Marco thinks it’s Reiner. He opens his eyes, expecting to look down and see the bigger soldier, his grappling hooks embedded in the titan’s flesh as he dangles across the monster’s chest, looking up at Marco and urging him to get back. But no… instead of Reiner, it’s a hand, a giant, skinless hand, riddled with exposed bone and bright, gleaming spurs, cradled under him. Marco flinches backwards, expecting the titan to grab him, but it leaves its hand where it is, a few feet below Marco, like it’s going to catch him should he fall, and Marco turns to look at the titan’s face.

It’s watching him, its head tilted back so it can look down at him with one bright, burnished gold eye. He’s never been this close to a titan’s face before—he’d hoped he never would be—and Marco can’t help cringing a little at their proximity. The titan keeps watching him, keeps its hand where it is, and if Marco had felt like he was going to swoon before, he doesn’t anymore. 

He clamors to his feet, and the titan lowers its hand once he’s standing again. It keeps watching Marco, blinking its enormous eye, and there’s no aggression in it. Marco gets the sense that it’s just watching, almost like it’s confused and doesn’t know what to do, and he takes a step forward, putting his hand on the side of its face, near its exposed teeth.

“Jean?”

“Marco!”

He jumps, thinking for one crazy moment that it was the titan who spoke, but it was Reiner, landing on the titan’s other shoulder, Annie landing beside him. Marco feels someone land behind him, and then strong arms latch around his chest, pulling him backwards and away from the titan’s mouth, and he fights against Bertolt’s suffocating embrace.

“Let me go!”

Bertolt mutters an apology in Marco’s ear, but doesn’t stop tugging on him until he gives in and steps back from the titan. The titan watches them for a moment longer, then makes a low, grumbling sound between its teeth before turning forward, looking out in front of it, staring at the rock. Annie leans around its neck, and Marco can see Reiner holding onto the maneuver gear straps on the back of her legs, his muscles straining as he supports her weight while she leans out into the void. “He’s not doing anything,” she announces, and Marco thinks that only Annie could sound positively bored out of her mind while standing on a titan.

Marco shoves Bertolt’s arms off him, ignoring another soft apology, and drops to a crouch so he can lean out and talk to Annie. He feels Bertolt’s hands grip the back of his belt, the same way Reiner is holding Annie, and even though he’s a little irritated with the other man right now, he’s still grateful for the help. “He just shifted!” he calls back, and watches as Annie lifts a thin golden brow. “Give him a minute, this is probably weird for him!”

“We don’t have time to wait!” Marco hears Reiner’s bass boom echo around the titan. “There’re other ones coming!”

Marco grimaces, and rises to his feet, Bertolt’s hands fluttering away from him like frightened birds. He walks up to the side of the titan’s face again, reaching out to touch it, and the titan rolls its eyes, peering down at him. Other titans are coming. If they get too close, they’ll attack, and then Jean won’t be able to carry the boulder. Everything will have been for nothing, and they’ll all die here, bleeding out their life’s blood on Trost’s red-tiled rooftops.

“Jean.” He says it quietly, affectionately, hoping his friend inside the monster can still hear him. The titan watches, unblinking, unmoving, and Marco steps up beside its face, touching it along its cheek and the side of its nose with both hands. “Jean, listen. You know what you have to do, right? You have to pick up the boulder and block the hole in the wall. You’re the only one that can do it.”

All around them, he can hear crashes, screams, sounds of destruction as Trost tears itself apart, but he only has eyes for the titan in front of him, the one watching him with one dark gold eye. “You can do it. I know you can.” He tries to smile, and sees his sweaty, pale face reflected in the titan’s eye. “I believe in you, Jean. I believe you can protect us, and save us all. I have faith.” The titan blinks, and its long, soft lashes brush over Marco like trailing feathers. “That’s all it’ll take, Jean. A little faith.”

He glances over his shoulder, and sees the other titans Reiner was talking about, sees them approaching and catches a glimpse of a fidgeting, deathly pale Bertolt behind him, his green eyes wide and shiny with fear. He hears the sound of grappling hooks firing, and when he turns back, Annie and Reiner are both gone, off to face the oncoming horde and give them a few precious seconds. A moment later, he hears hooks fire behind him, and he knows that Bertolt is gone too. He’s on his own. Alone with the titan.

Alone with Jean.

He can’t stay. If he stays, he’ll get caught between the titans, a tiny figure crushed by giants, and Marco leans his head forward, resting it on the side of the titan’s face. On the side of Jean’s face. He touches Jean’s nose with his hand, feeling the heat coming off it and thinking, now, that it’s less like a burning oven and more like the sun in summer, beating down on your shoulders and warming you through and through.

“You can do it,” he whispers, and the titan closes his eyes, swathing Marco with his impossibly long lashes, and for a single, crystal moment, it’s just the two of them, standing together amidst the chaos. “Please, Jean… do it for me.” Marco feels dampness on his cheeks, and realizes he has no idea when he started to tear up. The titan makes a low, growling sound, one that almost sounds like a cat purring, and Marco presses his lips to the side of the titan’s nose.

He has to leave. If he doesn’t leave now, he won’t, and Marco steps back, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. The titan opens its eye and looks at him, and he sees himself reflected in its huge eye, and he sees Jean at the same time, his best friend, looking back at him through the titan’s gold-flecked irises.

Marco watches himself smile, the image reflecting in the titan’s eye, and then he turns and fires his grappling hooks in one smooth motion, pulling away and leaving Jean behind to his work. He can’t help him anymore. All he can do is guard him.

~*~

Sasha knows the plan, even if it doesn’t make any sense to her. She doesn’t understand how Jean, someone she’s known for three years—arrogant, loud, abrasively handsome Jean—could possibly be a titan. She knows that he fell when his gear ran out of a gas, a story that got passed around in whispers in the Headquarters, a story told hurriedly, in case Marco was somewhere nearby to hear them, and she knows about the titan that covered them, the one that fought its fellows instead of trying to attack them. And she’d heard the lightning, and Dot Pixis’ speech, and she still doesn’t know what to make of it all.

At least her part of it is easy. Playing bait for the titans is easy, if completely terrifying, and she dangles against the wall, bracing herself with both feet, watching as the monsters below reach up for her with huge, grasping hands. They make her shudder, they make her stomach clench with fear, they make her want to vomit up everything under only bile is left, and that is a sin above all sins in Dauper, where food is dear and precious.

She swings back and forth, watching the titans mill around underneath her, thinking idly about how some of their smiles remind her of people she knows, when a flare goes up and the guards on top of the wall start moving around. She looks up, and while their words drift down in meaningless jabber, she can see them pointing, and she cranes her neck around to follow the sight line.

Something is moving out there, something huge. It’s moving with purpose, not the random, jerky movements of the titans, and for the first time since the wall around Trost crumbled against the Colossal titan’s foot, Sasha allows herself to feel hope.

They move out then, the generals and commanders sending the new recruits out in waves to distract the titans, to keep them from closing in on the slowly moving, ponderous titan with sandy hair, the one carrying a huge boulder on its back, and Sasha knows what this is. She’s no fool, she recognizes a bait run when she sees it, and she has to swallow down her bitterness, her anger in the knowledge that they’re being used as sacrifices, that their value, their _lives_ , are the least valuable to the Garrison and thus the first to go out against the titans. She swallows it, where it sinks into her innards and nourishes her, spreading through her veins and smothering the fear, at least for awhile.

She fights alongside Connie, the two of them swinging in tandem as they’d done so many times in training, and Sasha has a sudden moment of nostalgia, bittersweet and sour in her mouth, remembering following Jean through the woods and stealing his targets out from under him. This time, it’s Jean who is the target, Jean who is the focus, not of their attack but of their defense, and Sasha can appreciate the irony of defending a titan.

They cut through the herds, most of the titans more interested in Jean than in them, at least until they get close enough to attract their attention. When that happens, it’s just like it was before, the terror welling up over the anger, and she nearly weeps when she realizes she’s gotten separated from Connie and doesn’t know what happened to him. Daz is beside her, weak, cowardly Daz who only ever wanted to join the Garrison and patrol the walls, but she’s glad even to have him. Anything and anyone is better than facing them alone.

She lands on a rooftop, Daz at her heels, and she sees what’s going on for the first time. She gets her first good, long look at Jean, bent low under the weight of the boulder he carries, his back bowed and his legs trembling, and she can hear his ragged, tortured breathing echoing between the buildings and back up to her ears. He’s approaching the end of his journey, towards an open space with no buildings, close to the hole in the wall that even now is swarming with more titans, attracted by the ruckus, and she shrinks back. They won’t be able to use the gear there, they’ll be out in the open, and she can feel Daz trembling beside her, can hear him babbling frantically but can’t decipher his words, and she wonders if Pixis meant it when he said anyone who fled before the titans would not be court-martialed.

But then she sees it. Her eyes, sharp enough to pick a squirrel out of the countless leaves on a tree, fall on two moving forms, soldiers in front of Jean, running _towards_ the titans pouring in from the gate. Even from this distance, she recognizes them, knows Marco’s long, graceful stride and Annie’s deceptively casual lope, and she knows what they’re doing. They’re putting themselves in the line of fire, using their own bodies to distract the titans from their ally, their _friend_ , and the anger comes bubbling back, surprising her with its intensity. How dare they? How dare those fucking smug commanders do this, how dare they put recruits, _children_ , graduates who haven’t even had their graduation ceremony yet, in harm’s way while they sit back on the safety of the wall? She’d seen the officers, and how well-fed they all looked, and her mouth fills with bile when she remembers how not a single member of the 104th is a stranger to going to bed hungry.

She stands up abruptly, so fast her head swims for a moment, and Daz scrambles to his feet beside her. Sasha sucks in a deep, cleansing breath, filling her lungs with air, with life, and when she opens her mouth she _screams_ , a war cry without words, an anthem for the hunted, for the betrayed, and she fires her grappling hooks and goes shrieking towards the earth like a bird of prey falling from the sky. They tell legends in Dauper too, forbidden stories forgotten in the capital, and for one brief, shining moment, Sasha feels the warriors of her clan, the ancient, vengeful valkyries, singing in her heart and in her veins, and she will make them proud.

~*~

Marco hears her before he sees her, and it’s only the knowledge that titans don’t scream that keeps him from jerking to the side when Sasha lands beside him. He glances over at her, and nearly recoils at the look in her eyes, at the fire raging unchecked behind them, and he thinks he hears Annie give a small, dry laugh from his other side. Sasha runs with them, shrieking, her accent so thick and unchecked that Marco can only understand one or two words of every five, but he understands a battle cry when he hears one, and knowing that she’s here, that she’s beside them and not afraid, spurns him onward. They’re so close, the hole in the wall within sight, and when they turn away from Jean, the titans follow them with a blank, insatiable hunger in their eyes.

He thinks, as much as he can, as much as his higher thoughts can function in the terror of the moment, that they’re doing well, that they’re distracting the monsters and that they might actually do this, that they might take territory back from the titans for the first time ever, when an aberrant, fast and unpredictable, leaps out in front of them.

“Get out of the way!”

Marco whips his head around, recognizing the voice but not believing his ears, and just has time to get his arms up and catch Sasha as Daz violently shoves her towards him. They stumble backwards, Sasha still spitting with fury in his arms, and Marco sees Daz’s face start to crook into a smile before the aberrant slams its hand down on him. Daz disappears, explodes outward, and Marco blinks as a hot spray of blood peppers his face.

He feels small hands on his shoulders, and Annie yanks them both onward, and as they keep running, keep playing their role, Marco realizes he’s crying, and that his tears are washing Daz’s blood off his cheeks.

~*~

It’s too heavy. He’s not going to make it.

With every step, the boulder weighs heavier on Jean’s back, until he’s bent almost double, the stone’s weight pressing down on him, and the steam rising from his ankles nearly obscures his vision. Each step is agony, the bones and tendons in his ankles crackling apart and then reforming, only to be crushed again as he pushes forward, and when Jean dares to look up, the hole in the wall seems to be receding into the distance, taunting him as it gets further and further away instead of closer.

He doesn’t know where everyone else is; they fled away from him, distracting the other titans who wanted to swarm around him, and part of Jean wants to collapse, to sink to the ground and let the boulder fall on top of him, squashing him like an insect and making all this end. But he knows, if he stops, if he fails, that his friends will be blamed, that they’ll face the firing squad for no other reason than knowing him, and he can’t allow that. He can’t be responsible for their deaths.

He has to protect them.

When he looks up, the hole in the wall looms large in front of him, shimmering in the heat and steam from his massive titan body, and Jean catches his first glimpse of what it looks like beyond the walls as he limps forward, as he drags his disintegrating body towards it. One of his ankles goes out, the crack as loud as a gunshot, and it doesn’t reform, forcing him to limp on shattered bones, his foot twisted out to the side. His other ankle goes a few steps later, nearly sending him to his knees, and Jean chokes, nearly slathering with fear that he won’t make it.

He won’t, not on legs that can barely support him any longer, and Jean eyes the distance between himself and the hole. He was always good at that, always good at determining the distance between two things and how much energy he would need to get himself there, it’s one of the things that makes him so good at the gear, and he knows what he has to do.

With a deep, guttural round, so loud it hurts his own ears, Jean forces himself forward, tucking his upper body down and using the flagging strength in his abdomen and arms to throw the boulder over his head, towards the hole in the wall. As he falls the rest of the way to the ground, the world going black all around him, he hears a tremendous, riotous clap of sound, like the goddess in the wall striking out with her fist, and he sighs as he sinks willingly into the darkness.

He tried. No one can ever say that he didn’t try.

~*~

The force of the boulder hitting the hole was enough to make the wall tremble under Dot Pixis’ boots, and he watches over the smoking ruin of Trost, waiting, hardly daring to breathe, desperately hoping. When a green flare arcs up into the sky, it is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he has to swallow before barking orders, for fear his voice might crack.

“Go! Go, all of you! _SAVE THAT TITAN_!”

~*~

Marco lands on Jean’s back, and runs along the titan’s spine, its flesh already steaming and starting to disintegrate under his boots. He runs to the nape of the neck, where he can see Jean’s human form, his _real_ form, thrashing and twitching weakly, trying to pull free and unable. He falls to his knees behind him, wrapping his arms around Jean’s narrow chest and tugs, trying to pull him loose from the muscle tissue that holds him to the titan, but he isn’t strong enough. Sasha lands beside him, lending her strength, her face still frozen in a wild grin, and then Annie appears out of the steam, using her blades to slice through the titan flesh holding Jean down. They go tumbling backwards, Jean’s body limp and burning with fever, and Marco cradles him against his chest, tucking Jean’s head in against his shoulder.

“Wake up,” he whispers through clenched teeth, patting at Jean’s face in movements that are almost slaps, that would be slaps if Jean’s cheeks weren’t etched with dark burn marks and if his eyes weren’t rolled back in his head, showing only a sliver of white between his eyelashes. The eyelashes that, Marco realizes, are exactly the same shade as the titan’s.

“Marco, we need to move.” Annie’s voice is flat, positively disinterested, but Marco doesn’t need to look up to know that she’s telling the truth. He can feel the ground shake underneath them, can hear the soft, slathering noises the titans make when they’re hungry and getting close, and he tucks Jean in closer against him, turning his shoulder towards them in an unconscious imitation of Bertolt. He hears Annie sigh through her nose, and Sasha laugh, high-pitched and piercingly happy, almost gleeful, and their shadows fall across him as they stand between he and Jean and the approaching titans.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that it’s going to end this way, not after all they’ve done, not after how hard Jean tried.

Marco bows his head, his nose against Jean’s damp hair, and waits for the end.

It never comes. Annie and Sasha tense their legs, ready to spring forward and into battle, but suddenly, out of nowhere, a spinning, whirling dark green shape rips a hole in the sky, bouncing from titan to titan and sending them crashing to the ground. Marco looks up, confused, thinking that it’s impossible to have two _deus ex machinas_ in one day, but the titans collapse as if felled by the fist of a god, and he watches, stunned, as the green shape takes human form and rides the last one to the ground.

~*~

Jean opens his eyes. He’s not dead. Fascinating, he was sure he was dead.

The world is hazy before him, unfocused, and Jean blinks, trying to get his eyes to work. He’s pressed against someone, and he recognizes Marco’s smell, a scent that reminds him, absurdly, of home, and he finds the strength to lift his hand and hold Marco’s shirt in a weak, shaking grip. Marco doesn’t even notice, too busy looking at something else, and Jean looks over, watching as someone wearing a green cloak strides towards them.

The figure approaches through the haze and steam, slowly taking form and shake, and Jean’s exhausted mind goes back and forth, unsure on if he’s seeing a war god, or one of the goddesses of the wall, or possibly Reiner, until the figure reaches them and crouches down and it’s none of those things. It’s just a man, with shaggy hair hanging in his eyes and a long nose, kneeling across from them. His cloak hangs around him in folds, and Jean has just enough presence of mind to recognize the Wings of Freedom stitched over the man’s chest.

Jean closes his eyes, letting the darkness come over his head again. As he sinks into oblivion, he hears the man’s voice, soft and concerned, calming in the midst of all the chaos…

“Hey, are you kids all right?”


End file.
